[Publius]

There isn't anything inherently bad about low-bitrate music; it's all about how it's used. And 128k MP3s have so fewer bandwidth requirements than high-bitrate and lossless music that I can easily perceive indie artists getting more of a profit out of using them, if they're fronting the hosting costs themselves. It's the old capitalist Faustian bargain: the good is more successful than the best, but that doesn't mean the good is worse than the best.

And to be sure, 128k MP3s are good. Not relatively good, but much better than the poorly recorded cassettes and bad FM reception that used to prevail in consumer markets. Have most people ever cared about audio quality? My ex-gf wouldn't have used reripped MP3s and lossless if I had done it all myself. Consider it something of a historical fluke that we could have ever received higher quality than that in the first place (that we can rip to high bitrates from CD ourselves).

I try to avoid buying low bitrate music too, but mostly for other reasons. Once I can buy online music with full liner notes, proper tagging, gapless support and a reasonable backup capability for a cheaper price than CD, I probably won't care what bitrate it's encoded at.

 

[EvilDwarf]

I think for the majority of people, 128 kb/s VBR is more than sufficient, also given the headphones (let alone stereos), most people use. Just think about yourself snapping photos with $200-300 cams. Every DSLR enthusiast will throw his hands up in horror, when he thinks about the low quality. But you will still be satisfied.
In the future however, I think lossless formats will take over, because space will soon not be an issue any more. At the moment though with 512-1024 MB Ipods it still is.

 

[Oliver :)]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefemeister We live with compression every day. Jpeg photographs, MPEG-2 video, etc. As a whole everyone is basically happy because of the convenience it provides. There is always the small segment of purists who take objection (for example videophiles' hatred of macroblocking in DVD video) but the vast majority are perfectly happy.

Tell me about it

When a friend of mine got his first DVD-Player (ok, it's been a while), which commanded quite some buck back then, we watched Starship Troopers on it. Since I own the Laserdisc I knew that the sky in the night scenes has more than 8 colors. But not on the DVD. Blech. Even today, five years after the last Laserdisc left its cleanroom production plant, there are a number of movies, even very popular ones, whose DVD versions are nothing but an insult, and you are still better off getting the LD.

Being of purist mindset is an expensive one-way road. Valid for everything.

 

[Edil]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EvilDwarf I think for the majority of people, 128 kb/s VBR is more than sufficient, also given the headphones (let alone stereos), most people use. Just think about yourself snapping photos with $200-300 cams. Every DSLR enthusiast will throw his hands up in horror, when he thinks about the low quality. But you will still be satisfied. In the future however, I think lossless formats will take over, because space will soon not be an issue any more. At the moment though with 512-1024 MB Ipods it still is.

I have no problems with people using whatever format they want to use. If they want to use 64Kbps to squeeze gazillions tracks on their DAPS fine. Take me as an example with very few exceptions I like all the tracks included on a particular album, so in my DAP I have those tracks that I don't like much, encoded at 128-192 VBR but for those that I really like I used OGG or FLAC.

The problem here is that the artists or the people that are managing them are not providing the music in the best quality possible and they are selling music encoded in 128kbps CBR right away.

 

[jdriver]

There is some hope in that engineers and producers still care very much about getting the best possible sound on their masters. What happens after that is largely dicated by market forces, but as long as those high quality masters exist, there is a possibility of getting a high quality product to listen to.

Meanwhile, vote with your wallet and keep seeking out the best quality CDs, SACDs, LPs, etc. that you can find, and when you find the great ones let us know.

 

[Mephil]

at livemetallica.com every show is avaible in both 128 cbr mp3 and flac =)

I'd hate to see mp3 become the standard... and even worse 128kbit cbr.. it sounds just awful.... I'm a geek and almost all my music is on my pc but I dislike when compression outweights soundquality..